“This is gold, Mr. Bond, all my life I have been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock.” – Goldfinger“Do you expect me to talk?” – James Bond“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” – Goldfinger“You can turn off the charm. I’m immune.” – Pussy GaloreGoldfinger really is the quintessential James Bond film. Even those who aren’t big fans of James Bond have likely seen it, or parts of it. The image of a girl painted in gold, dead on a bed, and the immortal line – “Do you expect me to talk? / No, I expect you to die.” have slipped into popular culture. And it really is a good James Bond film and a good film, over all.

Goldfinger, unlike other early Bond flicks, does not feel overly long (hello, Dr. No), overly complicated, or overly boring (yeah, Thunderball, I’m looking at you). It moves at a good clip, and the plot is easily followed. The opening gambit takes place in Jamaica, where Bond uses some nearly laughable Really Big plastique and nitro to blow up a building. Later he’s with a girl and is attacked. He fights the guy, hand to hand, ending with tossing his assailant into a bathtub filled with water. The guy gets the jump on Bond, pointing his gun at him. Bond tosses a lamp into the water, electrocuting him. “Shocking,” says Bond.

Felix Lighter, Bond’s contact in the CIA then shows up and gives him his assignment from MI6. He’s to keep track of a British national in Miami, by the name of Goldfinger. Bond catches Goldfinger making money by cheating at cards, gets him to lose on purpose, and steals his girl, Jill. However, Goldfinger kills Jill by having her painted gold. She dies from skin suffocation. Bond reports to MI6, where he’s informed that Goldfinger is suspected of smuggling gold. He’s kitted-up with equipment by Q – in a scene that will become expected in every Bond film thereafter.

Bond is then sent to Scotland, where he discovers Goldfinger also cheats at golf – though Bond gets him back. Bond then uses a tracking device to follow Goldfinger to Switzerland. Bond meets a girl who is trying to kill Goldfinger. It’s Jill’s sister. The two try to get into Goldfinger’s estate. The girl is killed by Odd Job, Goldfinger’s mute Korean manservant. Bond is caught, and ends up spread-eagled on a gold table, with an industrial laser pointed at his privates. Bond gambles, claiming to know more than he does, and is not killed.

However, he is knocked out and wakes up on a plane, meeting Goldfinger’s pilot, Pussy Galore. She goes to great pains to explain to James Bond that she is only Goldfinger’s pilot, and she’s not at all taken in by Bond’s flirting. The plane lands in Kentucky, at Galore’s Flying Circus – where all the pilots are women.

In Kentucky, Bond discovers Goldfinger’s plot. He’s gotten a group of mobsters to smuggle all the various things he needs to break into Ft. Knox. Only one of the mobsters named Solo wants his gold million dollars rather than the promised ten million payday. Goldfinger gives him his gold bullion, but has Odd Job kill Solo, then crush his car at a junkyard. The crushed car is returned to Goldfinger. Goldfinger gasses to death the rest of the mobsters.

Goldfinger’s plan, however, isn’t to break into Ft. Knox to steal the gold, but to irradiate it with a nuclear bomb, thus making the gold useless and making all the gold he’s stored overseas even more valuable.

Galore’s pilots drop nerve gas in the area around Ft. Knox – knocking everyone out. It’s eerie to see all the slumped over people, as Goldfinger heads into the building. But Bond had convinced Galore to help – she had switched the canisters to something less deadly, and called Washington. Bond ends-up in a hand-to-hand with Odd Job, and defeats him by electrocuting him on a fence in Ft Knox. He barely defuses the bomb in time and it stops at: 007. Bond sets off for Washington, DC, in a plane piloted by Galore, but Goldfinger confronts him on the plane. During the fight, a bullet is fired, air is sucked out, Goldfinger is pushed out of the plane, and the plane starts to crash. Bond and Galore escape by parachute and the film ends with the two in each other’s arms under the parachute.

Made in 1964, Goldfinger has some huge and impressive sets, especially the Ft. Knox set, with it’s vaults of gold. This also is the quintessential James Bond film. It has pretty girls, including the improbably-named “Pussy Galore”. It has car chases. It has gadgets. It has Bond’s Astin Martin car. It has the M and Q we know and love. It stars Connery as Bond. Goldfinger, with his German accent, and his mysterious servant Odd Job are perfect villains. And the plot holds together and is big – really big. I mean, break into Ft. Knox? That’s big. But everything about Goldfinger is big – the sets, and the props in them are all huge. It’s impressive, in that sense, and even now, I wondered how they did some of the stuff they did – and marveled at the huge sets – no CGI extensions here! However, some things in the film did seem out of date, from the huge Nitro barrels and regular (non-digital) clock detonator, and toothpaste-like plastique, to the truly really big bomb Goldfinger brings into Ft. Knox – it felt out-of date.

But one surprising thing about the film to me was Pussy Galore. This is a woman who doesn’t immediately fall for Bond. She’s feisty, and tells him she’s immune to his charms. Over and over she pushes Bond away. And she’s not with Goldfinger either – not in that way. Galore is a pilot, a difficult profession for women today, in 2013, and virtually an impossible one for women in the early 1960s. All the pilots in her flying circus are women as well. Galore wears pants, trousers, and jodphurs throughout the film – we never see her in a skirt or dress. She’s a very different Bond woman. She also knows judo, and defeats Bond once in hand-to-hand combat. Later, they fight in a barn, and throw each other into hay. Bond eventually gets on top of her – she resists, – he persists, and eventually she gives in. It’s after their literal “roll in the hay” that she decides to help Bond, and is crucial in defeating Goldfinger.

Looking at it now, Galore, who surrounds herself with women, and is contemptuous of men, might be a lesbian. Yet, Bond forces himself on her, despite her cries of protest. The scene in the barn made me squirm, because to me Bond raped Galore. And in sexist 60s fashion, this “converted” her to be on his side. In a sense, it nearly ruins the film for me. At the very least, it adds an uncomfortable subtext, that Bond is not the hero he pretends to be.

Bond himself doesn’t seem to be the perfect spy in Goldfinger either. He’s constantly getting beat up, caught, tied-up, and locked in cells. He gives the impression he has no idea what Goldfinger is up to. He doesn’t care about the women he uses and sleeps with. He’s only interested in Pussy Galore because she resists him.

Still, it’s a good film overall, especially if you ignore the subtext.

Recommendation: See it! It is the James Bond film after all.Rating: 4 out of 5 StarsNext Film: Inception